Friday was forecast to be rainy all day, and so I had planned a mellow at-home day of games and movies. So, when the forecast suddenly improved, I was left scrambling to figure out tourist things to do. I came up with a couple of ideas of things in Portland.

Meredith always likes to get out on water when we are in places where that is an option, and I was tired from several long days of lots of walking and hiking. So, when we can get a boat tour, we can sit AND see things, something we call butt-sitting tourism. I found an hour-and-forty-five-minute harbor tour of Portland harbor, covering several lighthouses and forts, as well as some of the harbor islands. We drove down and had the usual slightly difficult and expensive time finding parking in Portland’s Old Port, but we managed. And so we had a good time on board the tour boat.

In addition to the lighthouses (including the famous-for-Maine Portland Head Light) and forts, we did see beautiful homes, both on the mainland and on islands. We got to see a couple of islands that are now city parks that you can get to via boat or causeway, and we saw sea birds and a few seals. The weather held, although it was cloudy for the last half of the tour, and many people retreated out of the wind on the deck, going into the cabin below. We stayed on the deck for the better views.

After the tour, we fueled up on some snack food and toured a shop or two. I then realized we had time to make the 4:00 train for the Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad. The four-car train does a three-mile out-and-back trip along the harbor and a track that is only two feet wide (standard tracks are four feet, eight and a half inches). It was cheaper to build narrow gauge railways, but they couldn’t haul so many people or so much cargo. Anyway, the train was a very relaxed tour, going about four miles per hour, but it was relaxing and interesting, and all the seats faced the harbor. Another successful butt-sitting tour. We headed home via Lewiston so we could eat supper at Roy’s Hamburgers again.

Today (Saturday) was forecast to be cloudy in Rockland all day, so we headed that way. As you may remember, when we were there the other day, fog rolled in later in the day, so we couldn’t see much near the ocean, so we skipped driving up Mt. Battie in Camden. With clouds today, we figured we could fix that.

So, when we got to Rockland about 11:00, we were greeted with thick fog. We improvised, walking and window shopping down one side of Main Street and up the other. It’s a fun shopping scene with many galleries and quirky shops.

Once we had finished Main Street, the fog had lifted to low clouds, so we drove over to the Samoset Resort to get lunch on the outside deck that overlooks part of the golf course and the ocean. We couldn’t quite see to the other side of the bay, but we could see quite a ways out. Then the fog started rolling back in. As we finished lunch, it was getting hard to see the sea.

We went up to Camden anyway to see if the weather was different. As we drove, the fog gave way to low clouds, but upon getting to the town, we couldn’t see any of Mt. Battie, not even the base. So we turned to window shopping again, and spent a long time sitting in the park next to the harbor. At one point, the mountain made a brief appearance, but by the time we got back to the car, the moment had passed. We drove home. We were sad to have missed driving up to Mt. Battie and the views it offers of the coast, but we had still made a good day on the coast. We ate a quick supper at home and finished the day with ice cream beside a river in the next town up the road, Wayne.

And so wraps up the Maine portion of our trip. We were going to stay another day, but it is supposed to rain pretty hard all day tomorrow, so we figured we might as well use the wet day as a travel day. We’ve booked a place in Ithaca, New York, which is a pretty town, so we can continue the touring there if the weather is good and we get there efficiently.

Maine has been a fun and delightful time.

Wednesday was forecast to be a beautiful, sunny day, if hot inland, so we decided to make that the day we would go to Acadia National Park, which is on Mount Desert Island, about three hours away from Livermore Falls. Brianna had indicated that it was the one place she would like to go in Maine, so away we went.

I had big plans for the day – get to Acadia and hike along the ocean, then go to Jordan Pond House for lunch and maybe hike around Jordan Pond, and finish up with driving up to and hiking to South Bubble Mountain, one of the mountains that overlooks Jordan Pond.

Right. We got to Acadia and parked about 10:00. We were near Thunder Hole, which is a tidal channel that booms when waves crash in. We checked it out, and it wasn’t booming much, but we sat on the rocks and looked at the ocean for a time, which became the go-to activity of the day. We found about half a dozen places we thought were good sit-and-watch spots over the course of the day.

We hiked south on the Ocean Trail, which is a fairly easy hiking trail along the ocean from Sandy Beach to Otter Point, a four-and-a-half-mile round trip. The sun was warm, but the ocean breeze was cooling, so we were comfortable. We took things very easy, stopping often to look around. We watched a few cliff climbers along the way, which looked terrifying, even with the ropes. We didn’t see too much wildlife (some seabirds), but the ocean crashing into the rocky shore was endlessly fascinating to watch.

We got to Otter Point and turned around. The trip back was much faster, since we didn’t stop, and we got back to the Thunder Hole area around 1:30 or 2:00. We bought some water and ate some of Brianna’s planned-ahead granola bars, and plunged back onto the trail to finish it by going to the beach. That part of the walk was more crowded and less scenic, but still had some pretty places. The beach itself was busy without being over-crowded, and is a rare (for Maine) sandy beach. Meredith waded a bit, and we headed back.

By the time we got to the car, it was close to 3:00, and I began to realize that my original plan was overly ambitious. We drove to the Jordan Pond House, where we ate a light lunch of popovers while looking out at the pond. It was a pretty spot for a spot of lunch. By the time we finished eating, it was 4:00 and time to head home. Because of some delays and stopping for supper and then, afterwards, dessert at Fielder’s Choice, an ice cream stand in Winthrop, we finally got home after 9:00, for a fifteen-hour day. Whew.

Today (Thursday), we started out late, as all three of us were puttering around (and I had to turn around to get my forgotten camera). As such, we didn’t get to Pemaquid Point until about noon. Pemaquid Point is home to a pretty lighthouse, but more importantly for us, it features some pretty incredible rock formations that slope down to the sea, where the waves hit the rock from many directions. If you like watching the sea, this is the place to do so. We ate some baked goods we had picked up near the Point, and then we spent about two hours moving from spot to spot, watching the sea. We could have stayed even longer, but Mer still wanted to visit her parents’ and grandparents’ graves in Rockland, see Rockland’s breakwater, and drive up to Mount Battie in Camden.

We did stop at Moody’s Diner for lunch/supper about 3:00. Moody’s is a local institution, and so we were pleased to get Brianna there, where she was able to be introduced to Maine blueberries in the form of pie. For those who don’t know, Maine blueberries are much smaller than normal blueberries and are sweeter. They are raked off of ground-hugging bushes rather than picked. Brianna proclaimed she liked them.

We drove up to Rockland, to the cemetery. Mer’s grandparents’ gravestone was in great shape, but her parents’ stone was covered in a grey moss, so we cleaned that up.

On to the breakwater; Rockland’s breakwater protects the harbor, and the breakwater is just shy of a mile long. We walked out to the base of the stones, which you can walk out on, when I remembered I needed my hat and sunglasses since the sun was shining (except for some light, wispy fog on the far side of the bay). I ran back to the car to get them, and ended up chatting with a retired couple who were sitting in their yard. The husband had taught in Livermore Falls until 1979, so we talked about people we knew.

I headed over to the breakwater again, to find Mer and Brianna coming to find me. I had thought they had headed out on the walk, but they had waited for me. As we started the hike out, the fog started drifting in. The far shore disappeared, and then some of the boats, and then the bay. I knew we were in for real fog when both the lighthouse and the shore disappeared. It was an odd sensation to be visually stranded on the breakwater, but very cool as well.

We made it out to the lighthouse, which favored us by materializing out of the mist. We turned back and quickly lost the house in the fog again. We finally saw the shore when we were about ninety percent (or more) of the way back. We gave up on the idea of driving up the coastal Mount Battie, since we wouldn’t see anything, and so we started to drive home. We drove out of the fog in about five miles. The coast is a strange creature.

So we had two excellent days on the coast. Saturday is starting to have a better forecast, so we may head back there to try Mount Battie again. Tomorrow’s weather forecast keeps vacillating, so we will probably have a low-key local day. After two long tourism days, we can use a bit of rest.

Monday we had rain forecast for all day, so we looked for indoor things to do that would still be Maine-related. We struck on going to L.L.Bean’s, a world-famous outdoor store that is based out of Maine. The stores (note the plural) are in Freeport, which is a little over an hour south of Livermore Falls.

It seems as if many people had the same idea that we did – we had trouble finding parking in the lots (note the plural). We found parking in a remote corner of a remote lot, so we were good. The rain had stopped for a bit, so we didn’t get wet while wandering around. It was like that all day long – some rain and then it would stop.

Bean’s has three stores – the home store with bed and bath stuff, the bike/kayak store, and the main store, which is clothing, camping, hunting and fishing. We popped into all three. The employees we interacted with were all very friendly. You may pay a premium for Bean’s, but there is good service.

After Freeport, we drove up to Auburn for lunch. We swung by the Auburn Mall because they advertised a for-nerds store, but that store (along with many others) was closed at 3:00 in the afternoon, which was odd. For lunch, we ate at Roy’s Hamburgers, which is a must-stop for me when in Maine. We ate in the car since it was windy and starting to rain again.

I took back roads home so I could show Brianna the Norland’s Living History Center, an old farm still run as if it were two hundred years ago. We also went into the actual town of Livermore Falls so Brianna could see my old high school building, which is now empty.

Today (Tuesday) was supposed to be good weather by early afternoon, but the day started out rain-free, so we left in the morning around 10:30. We wanted to explore western Maine, and we started about an hour away at Coos Canyon. Coos is a canyon with cool rock formations that are easy to climb around on. Normally. Maine has had an unusual amount of rain over the last six weeks, and Coos Canyon showed it – there were very few rocks showing, and the torrent encouraged wise viewing distances.

From Coos, we drove northwest toward the Rangeley Lakes region, going over the Height of Land, which is a dramatic pull-off overlooking several of the lakes and multiple layers of western mountains. We lingered there for some time.

We drove into Rangeley, where we ate lunch on a patio overlooking a small lake (on the back side of the town) that I hadn’t even known had existed. Brianna then got tea from a coffee shop, and we walked down to Rangeley Lake to look at the mountains and the water.

Then, on to a scenic drive west, dipping briefly into New Hampshire and back into Maine near Grafton State Park. We drove slightly past the park to Step Falls, a nature preserve of seven falls and pools. When we had been there a decade ago, the pools were crystal clear and great for wading in. Again, not today. We walked the mile back in to the falls, and the water rammed its way down over the rock faces. What pools were visible were churning masses of water. We still managed to find a few rocks to sit on and watch the water and mountains, but no wading today.

One last stop – Mer wanted to go back two miles to the park to see Screw Auger Falls, so we did that. The falls there drop into carved-out shafts of rock. It’s very dramatic, and more contained than Step Falls.

That left the hour-and-fifteen-minute drive back home, getting us to Livermore Falls around 8:20 pm, completing our ten-hour tour day. We took good advantage of the pretty weather.

We’re back in Maine, and we brought along our colleague and friend, Brianna. Brianna had never been to the Northeast before, and our showing around our friend Jacob back in 2016 had been a fun time, so we decided to try again.

We headed out Saturday morning, and after an uneventful ten hours or so, we ended up in Middlebury, Vermont. Mer and I graduated from Middlebury College back in The Day, and we love Vermont, so we thought that it was a good place to show Brianna. We ate on a restaurant patio next to Otter Creek, and then spent a happy, if somewhat humid, two sunset hours touring the college campus and a little bit of the town.

We spent the night in Rutland (forty-five minutes south of Middlebury), and decided to head toward southern Maine, so we planned on crossing over Quechee Gorge, the deepest gorge in Vermont. We managed to do so, but we had to take a long detour since the main highway was posted as closed. Once we got to the gorge, we hiked the trails there for about an hour, which was another fun and humid time.

On to Maine – we were delayed a bit by traffic and a self-imposed detour in New Hampshire to get around it, so we got to the cute coastal town of Ogunquit around 3:00. We ate a handy lunch/supper combo at a restaurant that had some views of the ocean, and then we walked along the Marginal Way, a mile-ish long paved trail along the ocean. The fog was slowly rolling in, which was pretty. It was a good intro to the coast.

We left the coast around 6:30 and got home to Livermore Falls at 8:30. And so, we tour on today, looking for indoor things to do since it is raining all day today.